Keynote Lecture 7: Multipronged, schoolwide approaches for prevention and intervention: Child/adolescent aggression as a case in point

This presentation will use child/adolescent aggression as an illustration to highlight the importance of adopting multipronged, schoolwide approaches for prevention and intervention. Children and adolescents who struggle with anger and aggression often display faulty thinking and behavioral patterns. This presentation will provide an overview of these problems at the different stages of encoding, interpretation, response generation and decision making. Aggressive behavior in these children and adolescents often spiral in a downward trajectory towards delinquency and bullying across time. Through this presentation, we will also understand the range of risk factors that are associated with delinquency and bullying. These risk factors - individual, family, school and peer factors - do not operate in isolation and they interact within and across multiple contexts. Therefore, it is crucial to consider programs and interventions that effectively address, prevent and remediate issues of child and adolescent aggression, which are often precursors to delinquency and bullying. Schoolwide prevention and intervention efforts should consider multipronged approaches inclusive of teaching children social problem solving skills, modifying beliefs supportive of aggression, supplementing skills training with parent training, helping children stay meaningfully connected to school, and strengthening teacher-student relationships.